THE Department of Agriculture (DA) said it is in the process of drawing up the necessary plans to enable the farm sector to face the challenge of dry spells and severe storms.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the DA is looking at designing programs using the latest equipment, such as Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems, to help farmers cope with climate change.
“The department has aligned valuable amounts of its resources toward capacitating itself with the equipment and trained personnel to design and implement programs,” said Yap in his speech before investors during the Philippine Economic Briefing held in Makati City yesterday.
He said the DA will go into the development and distribution of climate-ready crop seeds which are tolerant to floods, drought, and pests and diseases.
Yap also said the department will disseminate more information in crops science and planting techniques.
“Climate change [is] the first of two critical challenges that [the DA] must face with its stakeholders as [we] seek to accomplish our mandate of increasing agricultural output,” he said.
The two recent typhoons, Ondoy and Pepeng, have wreaked havoc on the farm sector, with production losses already breaching the P18-billion mark.
Badly hit was the rice sector, which accounted for 80 percent of the P18.4 billion in damages due to the two typhoons.
Earlier, International Crops Research Institute for the Semiarid Tropics director general Dr. William Dar said the government should have the sense of urgency in drawing up preparations to ensure that the farm sector will be able to confront the challenges of climate change.
Dar also warned that the Philippines will experience more “perfect storms” if the government will drag its feet on the issue of climate change.
CENTRAL Luzon returned to life, its residents busy scrimping whatever the twin typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng left as floodwaters started to recede, and government people counting the damages while assuring the public that the food supply is enough and that market prices are stable.
The National Food Authority (NFA) said the government’s rice supply in the flood-washed provinces would last for 97 days more, and there is no reason to worry or to import yet.
“The national [rice] stock is still good up to the first quarter of next year,” said Angel Imperial, NFA assistant manager for Central Luzon.
NFA warehouses across the region keep around 4 million bags of rice, including 1.5 million bags of unmilled palay. Commercial stocks, or those held by businessmen, account for 1.27 million bags, while household stock was placed at 1.5 million bags. These combined stocks will last for more than three months more based on Central Luzon’s rice-consumption rate of 69,740 kilograms (kg) per person per year.
Nueva Ecija, which produces the bulk of the food supply in Central Luzon, bore the brunt of the calamity. Around 61,785 hectares of rice lands, whose crops were mostly in their vegetative stage, were swept by the floods.
Serafin Santos, provincial agriculturist, said the crops planted in around 24,733 hectares do not have a chance to recover. That was equivalent to about 164,097 metric tons of rice lost, placing the total estimated crop damages in the province at P677.75 million.
An initial report of the DA Central Luzon office said that around 37,509,84 metric tons of rice crops costing some P147.58 billion were damaged by Ondoy alone. They had yet to receive field reports to come out with the total damage, including those affected by Pepeng.
Around 24,356 hectares of farmlands were destroyed in Pampanga; 27,824 hectares in Tarlac; 25,460 hectares in Bulacan; and 4,259 hectares in Bataaan.
Imperial said NFA rice prices in local retail stores are still between P35 to P38 per kilogram. He said the government is ready to deluge the market with government rice when necessary.
“There is no cause for alarm,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pantabangan Dam shut its spillway gates since Tuesday when the reservoir elevation went down to 220.18 meters, or a meter less after it reached the 221-meter automatic spilling level last week when Pepeng lashed Luzon, the National Irrigation Administration reported.
CENTRAL Luzon returned to life, its residents busy scrimping whatever the twin typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng left as floodwaters started to recede, and government people counting the damages while assuring the public that the food supply is enough and that market prices are stable.
The National Food Authority (NFA) said the government’s rice supply in the flood-washed provinces would last for 97 days more, and there is no reason to worry or to import yet.
“The national [rice] stock is still good up to the first quarter of next year,” said Angel Imperial, NFA assistant manager for Central Luzon.
NFA warehouses across the region keep around 4 million bags of rice, including 1.5 million bags of unmilled palay. Commercial stocks, or those held by businessmen, account for 1.27 million bags, while household stock was placed at 1.5 million bags. These combined stocks will last for more than three months more based on Central Luzon’s rice-consumption rate of 69,740 kilograms (kg) per person per year.
Nueva Ecija, which produces the bulk of the food supply in Central Luzon, bore the brunt of the calamity. Around 61,785 hectares of rice lands, whose crops were mostly in their vegetative stage, were swept by the floods.
Serafin Santos, provincial agriculturist, said the crops planted in around 24,733 hectares do not have a chance to recover. That was equivalent to about 164,097 metric tons of rice lost, placing the total estimated crop damages in the province at P677.75 million.
An initial report of the DA Central Luzon office said that around 37,509,84 metric tons of rice crops costing some P147.58 billion were damaged by Ondoy alone. They had yet to receive field reports to come out with the total damage, including those affected by Pepeng.
Around 24,356 hectares of farmlands were destroyed in Pampanga; 27,824 hectares in Tarlac; 25,460 hectares in Bulacan; and 4,259 hectares in Bataaan.
Imperial said NFA rice prices in local retail stores are still between P35 to P38 per kilogram. He said the government is ready to deluge the market with government rice when necessary.
“There is no cause for alarm,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pantabangan Dam shut its spillway gates since Tuesday when the reservoir elevation went down to 220.18 meters, or a meter less after it reached the 221-meter automatic spilling level last week when Pepeng lashed Luzon, the National Irrigation Administration reported.
THE Department of Agriculture (DA) has tempered its growth expectations for 2009 to a range of 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent following the production losses caused by recent typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap noted that the extensive damage caused by the two recent typhoons would make it difficult for the farm sector to achieve its original growth target of 3 percent.
“The most severely affected was the rice sector [as] around 500,000 hectares [of farmlands planted to palay] were affected,” Yap told reporters in a press conference to kick off the Philippine Economic Briefing held in Makati City yesterday.
On Tuesday the DA estimated that the losses in the rice sector represent around 12 percent of the 6.4-million-metric-ton target production for the fourth quarter of 2009. Losses in the rice sector from the two typhoons accounted for 80 percent of the damages in the farm sector.
Rice and corn are the two major crops that prop up the crops subsector. The crops subsector accounts for almost 50 percent of total farm-sector output.
Economists said the DA’s growth forecast is consistent with their own projections.
Rolando Dy, executive director of the University of Asia and the Pacific’s Center for Food and Agribusiness, said flat growth will even be possible for the sector this year.
“Growth for the second semester could even go south [as] damages caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng [are growing],” said Dy in a text message.
Cayetano Paderanga, former director general of the National Economic and Development Authority, noted that the projected farm growth for 2009 is lower than the average growth of the farm sector.
“Our long-term farm growth is about 3 percent so [the projected 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent range] would be a big reduction,” said Paderanga in a text message.
Former budget secretary and University of the Philippines economist Benjamin Diokno, for his part, said the DA’s growth forecast is “a bit too rosy.”
“With a weak first-half performance and a dismal fourth-quarter farm output performance, I expect the farm sector, at best, to register zero growth for the entire year,” said Diokno.
Yap, however, assured that the farm sector would recover, at least in the first quarter of 2010, as the DA’s interventions take effect.
“I predict that there will be a sharp spike in farm growth for the first quarter of next year. We are now preparing the package of assistance to farmers so they can replant immediately,” he said.
The DA chief also allayed fears that there will be a shortage of rice next year due to the damages caused by the two typhoons.
“My assessment is that we will have 170 days worth of stocks as we end 2009,” he said.
This, said Yap, gives the Philippines enough breathing room to fully assess its rice-import requirements for 2010.
Manila will be holding a tender for a maximum of 250,000 metric tons of long-grain white rice at the end of this month.
ORGANIC-farming advocates on Monday called on the government to fund and implement programs on sustainable agriculture and programs that will make farming resilient to natural calamities, such as drought and flashfloods brought about by climate change.
Efren Moncupa, a lawyer and lead convenor of Go Organic! Philippines (GOP), said that aside from promoting environment-friendly food-production practices, concerned government agencies, particularly the Department of Agriculture, should integrate disaster preparedness and risk reduction to food security, with the objective of minimizing damage to agriculture caused by extreme weather events, such as agricultural drought or flashfloods.
Moncupa, a former agrarian-reform undersecretary, who is now with the Bataan-based Malasimbu Agricultural Cooperative, stressed that agriculture, the growth driver of the Philippine economy, is vulnerable to extreme weather events because of climate change, and it is best for the government to protect the sector from calamities anyway possible.
“The government should allocate adequate fund for disaster preparedness, to reduce risk of losing billions of pesos worth of investment in the agriculture sector. Otherwise, our economy will continue to be vulnerable to natural calamities,” he said.
La Liga Policy Institute (LLPI) managing director Roland Cabigas, also a convenor of GOP, said timely government intervention to protect the interest of the agriculture sector, particularly the resource-poor farmers, is needed to promote the sector’s continued growth and development.
He cited the damage brought about by Ondoy to agriculture, which was placed at P3.2 billion, by the National Disaster Coordinating Council as of October 2.
“We cannot dismiss the fact that such damage will severely affect small farmers who are still reeling from the impacts of the global economic crisis,” he said.
A member of the Alternative Budget Initiative, a consortium of nongovernment organizations, which has been actively engaging the government in the budget process, LLPI identified lack of a national framework for disaster preparedness and risk reduction in response to climate change in the proposed P1.54-trillion budget for 2010.
The group is proposing an increased budget allocation for the DA to implement specific climate-change actions to make the 2010 budget “climate sensitive” and resilient to drought and flood.
This increased allocation includes an additional P500 million for capacity building for farmers on organic agriculture and biodynamic farming; P50 million for research, development and piloting of climate change-resilient crops and livestock; and P100 million for research, development and piloting of sustainable farming systems.
The group is also proposing to realign P500 million for capacity building of farmers on organic farming.
Part of the P100 million for research, development and piloting of sustainable farming systems, the group proposed, should be used to study climate-change effects, such as drought and flood, with the end goal of minimizing losses on the part of the farmers.
“If we need to redesign farming to prevent huge economic losses because of drought and typhoons, then we should and only through timely government intervention such as providing adequate funding can address this climate -change challenge,” Cabigas said.
DAVAO CITY—The Mindanao Business Council (MinBC) here has challenged airline companies and shipping forwarders to offer special discounted rates to Mindanao growers, who assured typhoon-struck Luzon that they would offer cheap vegetables and other food items if transportation rates would be taken cared of.
“Or if the government is interested, it can send in the C130 of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to bring the cheap food products from Mindanao,” said Ednar Carlos Dayanghirang, executive director of the MinBC, who reacted to reports about the high-priced vegetables from Southern Mindanao reaching the Metro Manila markets.
He blamed the freight cost for the high prices, “when we have plenty and very cheap vegetables in the country.”
The MinBC and local government officials have long been challenging the government to revisit the country’s cabbotage law, or the law governing the local shipping industry, to allow Mindanao to access the markets in Metro Manila.
“We can, and we want to help by sending our cheap food items there,” he told the regular Monday press conference of the Davao Press Club at the Café Rysus at SM City here.
Davao City councilor Peter Lavina said that high transportation rates have been a perennial problem among businesses in Mindanao. Because of the high cost of transporting products from Mindanao, local growers find that it is cheaper to import from neighboring Asian countries than to make the products from Mindanao available in the local market.
The shipping industry has already warned in a statement last month against tampering with the cabbotage law or lose local shipping to foreigners.
Meanwhile, the Dayanghirang and the agricultural growers in Davao City have formed an agricultural board to petition the Davao City Council to consider their 25-year development plan while the city reviewed its Comprehensive Development Framework.
Among the highlights of the 25-year plan was to discourage the conversion of lands “while the city has not maximized the use yet of the areas identified and segregated for housing and industrial use.”
“We want businesses to maximize these areas first before they utilize the agricultural lands for housing and industrial use,” he said. “We don’t want zoning changes to happen fast because this will only encourage landbanking.”
Lavina said that the city council was not amenable to tinkering with the classification of the prime agricultural areas, “because these are the areas covered by law that should not be touched.” He said that these are the areas devoted to irrigated rice lands.
He said the council has also suspended the approval of land conversions and has informed all landowners that it would not accept any petition for reclassification of lands for the duration of the review.
THE Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food is asking government and private banks to relax conditions for extending credit to farmers who incurred heavy losses from killer typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.
Sen. Loren Legarda, who chairs the committee, explained that easy credit “will help our farmers recover fast from the effects of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, which have ruined vast tracts of rice and other crops, thus threatening our food supply and posing the possibility of starvation and malnutrition among many of our people.”
Legarda also pushed for the immediate passage of a bill that would amend Presidential Decree 717, also known as the agri-agra law, to liberalize the extension of credit to the agricultural sector to boost production.
Legarda appealed to government, commercial and rural banks to widely open their credit windows and relax the loan requirements to facilitate processing of loan applications of the farming and agribusiness sectors to help them recover and ensure the country’s food supply in the coming months.
In pushing to amend PD 717, she explained that it mandates banks to extend 25 percent of their loanable funds to the agricultural and agrarian- reform sectors. However, the absence of the network linkages has led most banks to resort to investments in eligible government securities, which in most cases has no connection whatsoever to agri-agra credits,” she added.
She reported that while the Senate has passed Senate Bill 3431, entitled “An Act Providing for an Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Credit and Financing System Through Banking Institutions,” also known as the Agri-Agra Reform Credit Act of 2009, its counterpart bill is still awaiting approval on third reading in the House of Representatives.
“The passage of the bill is urgent to uplift the income and living conditions of 35 percent, or 12 million, of our population who are engaged in the agricultural sector,” Legarda said, adding that it also aims to address “increasing potential threats of climate change to our agricultural sector in the future.”
She noted that in 2008, the total credit demand for agriculture amounted to P206.453 billion. Of this amount, she said, only 24.05 percent, or less than one-fourth, was supplied by the banks and other institutions in the country’s financial sector.
“The aforementioned data show that while unibanks and commercial banks have abundant credit resources, they have been undercomplying with the agri-agra credit requirements mandated by PD 717. The primary reason is that these institutions are based in urban centers which lack the capability to assess agricultural credit,” she said. “Rural banks and thrift banks tend to overcomply with the PD 717 requirement.”
According to her, this demonstrates that there is a viable market for agri-agra credits.
“In order to expand this viable market, we need a network of linkages that will connect the source of deposits in the urban areas on one hand, and the users of credit in rural areas on the other hand,” she added.
VIRAC, Catanduanes—Provincial Gov. Joseph Cua has given his assurance that with the local crab-development program now in place, Catanduanes would be able to reclaim the title of “crab capital” of the Philippines, which it lost to Negros province about three decades ago.
He gave the optimistic outlook in a recent provincial One Town, One Product (Otop) assembly at the Capitol Dome, where he said the Catanduanes Crab Center (CCC) established last year has been able to address the rampant poaching and illegal transport of crablets out of the island.
Crabmeat processing has been considered as among the Otop choices of at least three municipalities of the province known for the abundance of mud crabs in its coastal and swampy areas.
The CCC was also able to standardize the operations of the crab nursery and the culture of crab larvae to crablet sizes for local grow-out production, Cua said.
The establishment of the CCC was under a provincial ordinance that prescribes more severe penalties for crablet poaching and smuggling.
For decades, enterprising Catandunganons, in cahoots with buyers from Luzon and the Visayas, have been into poaching and selling of crablets despite prohibitions on these activities, the governor said.
The CCC, with its nursery in barangay Palnab here, serves as the bagsakan or buying station for crablets gathered by residents from all over the province, mostly from the municipalities of the crab-rich Bagamanoc, Panganiban and Viga towns.
In 2006 the province of Camarines Norte first gained popularity when an organized group of crab growers started marketing crabmeat to other parts of the country. It was discovered later that the province derived its supply of raw materials from these three Catanduanes towns.
“We see to it now that all crablets gathered from all our producing areas go to the CCC that the provincial government buys at prices higher than those offered by unscrupulous traders illegally exporting them outside the province,” he said.
While these traders pay P6 for a crablet, the governor said the province buys them at P8 to P10, providing the gatherers a collective income of about P5 million since the start of the operation of the CCC as a bagsakan barely nine months ago.
“We are now in control of the flow of crablets out of the province, giving local crab growers all the opportunities not only to engage in fattening, but also in raising high quality crablets for the provincial government that facilitates its marketing to other provinces or regions,” Cua stressed.
In its function as the marketing arm of crablets for growers and aquaculture operators outside the province, he said the CCC was able to generate over P1 million this year, an amount set aside for the expansion of its operations and fund assistance to other crab-production ventures in the province, both of local governments or private-sector entrepreneurs.
To further protect the industry from illegal activities, the province has created a task force that apprehends on sight crablets found in the hands of poachers. However, Cua said he is not enforcing the penalty. Instead, money received by those caught selling will be confiscated.
“No confiscation [of products], no imprisonment for the time being,” the governor said, guaranteeing that the policy will gradually teach the people that it is also important to cooperate and work with their government for a change.
“We are also in close coordination with various government agencies in our efforts to regain our lost glory of being the crab center of the country. The Department of Labor and Employment [DOLE] has provided a fund grant to the Panganiban town crab center as part of our joint undertaking of creating more jobs out of our crab industry,” he said.
DOLE gave P120,000 which was used in the purchase of equipment now being used in the modernization of the crab-production facility, the governor said.
The Department of Science and Technology also had its crab-fattening program in the province being implemented with the Pagkasararo Multipurpose Cooperative Inc. in barangay Cabuyoan, Panganiban town.
The program facilitates the transfer of technology on the method and techniques in crab management and feeding, crab-cage construction, and efficient handling and packaging of fattened crabs for marketing. Crabs produced under this technology command higher prices, he pointed out.
The provincial government is allocating funds for the purchase of three backhoes to be used in developing fishponds not only for growing crabs, but also for the polyculture of bangus and tilapia, which he said substitute for marine products in times of rough seas and inclement weather.
The governor said he encourages Catandunganons to engage in the crab business, which ultimately will prove to be a much better and bigger revenue producer than the abaca industry that is currently the main money earner for the province. (PNA)
